Tomorrow is Not Today

John Solleder
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the tomorrow is not today podcast. You've already started to create the life you want just by being here designed for you as a business professional. So you can be physically mentally and emotionally healthy, more productive, less stressed, and living a life you truly love. My name's Kingsley and thank you for coming on another journey with one of our uniquely qualified professionals.

Kingsley: Welcome to the tomorrow is not today podcast. Very excited to have you along here today with us. Very special guests all the way from

welcome to tomorrow's not today podcast.

Yeah.

John: for having me, Kingsley. And yeah, I haven't been to Australia and just seen a little bit of it. I mean, I was mostly in the cities when I was there years ago. But yes, Texas. And at the time I lived in New York, by the way, so I didn't live in Texas back then. But yeah, there's parts of Texas.

There's parts of Australia that [00:01:00] very, very similar.

Kingsley: I've heard that and uh, I I do have to get back there and get to Texas. That's for sure. Uh, big. I hear mind you compared to Australia, everything in America is big. It's just, just how it is a place. Uh, tell us a little bit about you've got quite the, I was going to say sordid background, but that's probably not the best way to put it.

You've got quite the uh, in so many different areas. So many different ways in business and health and a whole bunch of different things. So just give us a bit of a snapshot summary of your life, I guess. Yeah,

John: Well, first of all, I've got, I've got, well, I had four children. I've got three, one. Fortunately my one daughter passed away a few years back. And married 23 years to the same woman and she's, she's Canadian. I'm American. And as we speak, we're going through this whole crazy tariff thing and we're not sure what's going to happen.

And we've got, you know, a lot of Property in Canada and a business in Canada. So, you know, and family in Canada for that matter. So who knows a little bit of craziness [00:02:00] happening in the world, but what else is new, but yeah, I I've been self employed for 42 years. I started way back I was in college and I was Working at a health club.

I was selling health club memberships and I was always involved in sports. Back then I wrestled and played judo. And I did that for a lot of years after that, but a guy who I had competed not against directly. He was a lot smaller guy than me, but he introduced me to the direct selling field.

This was in April of 1983, May of 83. Then president Reagan spoke at my college commencement. And he spoke about finding mentors in your life and finding people who would teach you a business that you were interested in. And I all of a sudden realized the last 30 days I was being mentored for one thing, and I found a business that I liked.

So I decided to pursue it. June of 1983, I went to my first actual meeting ever in my life. I never was to anything, you know, besides little tiny meetings of any kind. And I went to [00:03:00] my first meeting and I got really excited about direct selling and been doing it now for 42 years. The last 29 years have been with one company primarily a company that markets a unique product for the human immune system.

I like science, as you said, very accurately. I like science. I like evidence based science. I don't like, you know, this happened for Antilles. I like to be able to look at stuff under a microscope. I'm not a doctor, but I like to be known at doctors. look at stuff and verify that, you know, what's being said about, you know, various supplementation is true.

So that's, that's kind of been part of my career. The other part of my career has been in the financial service world. I've always maintained insurance licenses since an early age, I got interested in finance after my very first company had some, some problems and I watched my income go from here to here.

I'm not exaggerating things, literally overnight. And I was a young guy. I was single at [00:04:00] the time. I had no kids, so it didn't affect me. But some of the guys who had families, some of the women who had families, I watched the effect and I said, you know what, I want to know what's going on financially in the world.

So I decided how, you know, better to do that than get into the the money business, so to speak, the insurance business. And I've always kind of played around with it. Never, never made a career of that. That was my career path, but I liked it and I always wanted to maintain a footing in it, if nothing less than that, understanding the current laws, the current tax laws, the current estate laws here in the United States, for example.

So yeah, I've had, I've had multiple careers, frankly over the years, but as far as making a living, it's always been in the direct selling and network marketing space.

Kingsley: going along that that phase a little because I'm the same like I love looking at the science behind things and you know, checking what's happening, what's going on, hasn't been verified properly. I think it's incredibly important to do that. Uh, and obviously having a little bit of the back, that background [00:05:00] and then being in business for yourself.

Obviously, we talk a lot about physical and mental health for business owners, entrepreneurs, senior level execs. How did you, I guess, going through those times where the income goes, and I, I know that the, the precious side of it when you don't have a lot of dependents and responsibilities makes it easier.

But when you're young, it also hits you really hard as well because you're invincible and nothing can go wrong. Usually that's how we think. Um, did you do to pull yourself out of that? And obviously you went, okay, I'm going to make a plan for the future. How did you get into that thought mode and what did you do about it for yourself?

John: You know, I focused on myself, on my, not only my self development, But my business self development, I said, you know, no matter what I'm going to do, if I'm going to be working for me, I've got to work on me. My product's got to be me. Doesn't have to be this specific network marketing brand or this specific insurance brand or this specific [00:06:00] whatever brand.

I worked on my skills. My communication skills, my writing skills, so that I would be able to always articulate a message to someone. So the person on the other side that I was trying to market to, recruit, sell to, that they would clearly understand what it is that my message was. And if they were so interested after getting that message, you know, that they would, would correspond and say, Hey, you know, raise their hand and say, Hey.

You know, let's get involved in business together or, or sell me your products. So I really worked on me second to that. I also worked on my self development because. I wasn't raised by parents that understood self development. I hate to say they're both dead now, but they were both good people. They both worked hard, but they were always people who blamed everything on someone else.

It was the government's fault, the president's fault, the whatever. And I kind of figured out when I heard the statement that, you know, for things to change, [00:07:00] you have to change, or for things to get better, you have to get better. Jim Rohn put those words together many, many years ago. And one of the very first direct selling meetings I went to in Hartford, Connecticut.

I heard those words and I said, well, you know, in other words, it's not the president's fault. It's not the economy's fault. It's not my next door neighbor's fault. It's not my sister's fault. Like I have a role in what happens good, better, and different. And I started reading things like as a man thinketh by James Allen, for example.

And I realized by reading that little, little short book, I mean, you read that thing in an hour, if you're a fast reader, you can read it in 45 minutes. And I read that, that book over and over again. With the idea that what you attract in life is what you are, not what you want to be, but what you are.

And I said, well, if I become a better person, if I become a smarter person, if I become a more educated person, I don't mean formal education. I mean, real education, street education. I'm going to attract other people that are [00:08:00] so inclined.

To work with some of the top earners in my industry that have always wound up in my downline and made me money because

Of people that were high caliber because I was high caliber. I didn't start out high caliber. I started out knowing nothing, but I worked really, really hard to figure things out. The other part of that self development wasn't just the reading with James Allen, and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and Jim Rohn, and all the other great authors, Earl Nightingale.

But the other thing was, I became a trial and error type of guy. And what I mean by that is, I'll give you an example. I went into the car business for a very short time in Pennsylvania. I know nothing about cars, which is really funny because my son is a total car guy. He can take an engine apart and put it back together and sleep.

Me, it's like, is it six cylinder or eight cylinder? I do know the difference, but you know, [00:09:00] I'm not a car guy. I get in, I turn the key if it goes terrific. If it doesn't, I go to one of the other cars and I put a key in it and hope it goes. But I went into the car business because I wanted to try out a sales system that I learned from a guy named Dale Maloney.

Dale's deceased now, but I learned this sales system and I said, I have to try it and I can read about it and I could theorize it

And I could actually try it. And I did, and I took 19 cars at this dealership in Pennsylvania. I took 19 cars that, that the owner of the lot, they had five different brands of cars he was selling.

I said to him, Jim, give me however many cars you want to get rid of this weekend. Okay. Gimme a budget. Let me do a direct mailing piece. Okay? This was in the days when we actually mailed things before the internet, and I mailed out these letters to all of the businesses within about a four or five mile radius of this car dealership.

And I took the cars and I put 'em on a hill. It was like a a a a mound. I was able to put the cars [00:10:00] facing up this way. So in the direct mail piece I described, these are the vehicles that you're eligible to buy, and they're all heavily discounted in one weekend. Of those 19 cars, I sold 15. Knowing nothing about cars.

Point being, Kingsley, that I had to do it because I couldn't tell somebody else to do something that I was not willing to do myself.

Know, not being a car guy, if they came in and they were asking all kinds of technical stuff, I was like, look, that's the vehicle, here's the price, it's heavily discounted, it's only this weekend, if you want the car, buy it, do your own research.

And I did. And point about all of that is, to me, business, whatever business one is in, the only way to do it is to go out and kind of get your nose bloody. You know, it's like sports. You gotta get hit in the nose once in a while if you're in a sport, for example, to realize, is or isn't. And to me, business is the same.

It, it, you don't get beat up physically as much, but [00:11:00] sometimes mentally you get beat up even worse. But that's what I did. And that's been everything that I've done since in network marketing, in the financial service world, in the car world for a short time is go out and do it and figure it out and ask questions of other people with more experience and talent, frankly.

Don't be shy about asking people questions because successful people will share how to be successful, but they're not going to come to you and volunteer it. You have to pursue them. So that's kind of all I've ever done is trial and error and then pursue excellence in people who are excellent in a given field and ask them questions and be tenacious, but go to them with here's what I did versus here's what I'm thinking of doing.

In other words, go to them with some practical things that you did that maybe you even failed at. Say, here's what I did. What do you think I could have done differently? And that's, you know, the learning process. And that's why I think I've been, you know, pretty successful in everything I've done is I'm not afraid to do that.

And the people I work with know I've [00:12:00] done it. I'm not theorizing it. I'm going from application of actually having done it myself.

Kingsley: you've just given sort of a whole master class there and a whole range of things. Uh, you've a ton of different things there, which, which is really, really cool. So I want to drill down on some of those things that you talked about uh, and go, see if we can go through bunch of things, not too in depth, obviously, because we'll, we don't have quite that long.

But the first thing that I think is really important to you that you said is that you started working on yourself. Now, how did you know you had to work on yourself? Because a lot of people aren't that self aware. And so what made you realize that you had to work on yourself and start reading books and listen Rohn?

John: Well, because I realized that I didn't know what I was doing and that I was going to become the brand that I, that, that the people that people saw, no matter what great product I was [00:13:00] representing, whether it was cars, whether it was insurance, whether it was network marketing, no matter what the brand was, I was the person sitting in your living room across from you.

So if I represented myself.

Kingsley: is such an important point. And I think a lot of people don't recognize that yet, that no matter what we do, no matter who we are, we are the brand, whatever company you're working for, you are the brand, you are the person that people are going to work for. work with. I do a lot of work with, um, industry uh, agents, uh, don't realize that they are the brand.

You might work for a company, you might have a brand name that you're with, but people want to work with people, not companies. And you're starting

John: Transcripts.

Kingsley: Jeff [00:14:00] Bezos following versus Amazon's following and people are realizing that you need to build and be the brand that that is such a critical point you just mentioned there.

John: Thank you, but that's what I realized because you just, well, take real estate, right? So I'm sure in Australia you have multiple listings like we do it here in the United States, right? Which means any realtor, if there's a sign on that house, it says for sale, any realtor can show that house from any given company.

Why should they buy from you? Because you're the brand you're knowledgeable. They ask a question, you know, the answer. If you don't know the answer, you don't make up the answer. You say, Hey, on that one, let me check because maybe there's something specific in that house. You know, let's just say there's a fireplace and a person says, well, can I burn this or that in it?

You know what? I don't know the answer to that. Let me, let me get back to you. Let me check with the homeowner tomorrow and get back to you. Rather than making it up and go, sure, you can burn whatever. I didn't make it up an example here, but [00:15:00] I think being knowledgeable is one thing, but being a know it all turns people off.

If you're honest with them and say, Hey, you know what? I, I, you got me on that one. Let me put, let me do my job and let me inquire. And I'll get back to you with that answer. Cause you are obviously interested in this house. So you're not Kingsley, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Really? What really like it, John. Okay, great.

So let me get back to you on that one. Let's look at the rest of the house, you know, and move them forward. You know, that was something I learned early on was don't get stuck either on something you don't know, because that could end the conversation, like to say, Hey, on that one, let me get back to you and let's move forward.

You know, on the rest of the house, or the rest of the car, or the rest of the insurance policy, or the rest of the pay plan, or the rest of something that someone asked me that I don't know, and I think being honest with people is something that we need to be in a selling profession, and if we are with people, and we're clear with them, and they say, hey, this person's honest, Once again, we're the brand.

So at the end of the day, they're going to say, Hey, I'm going to buy from that guy because I like that guy or I like that gal or I [00:16:00] like that couple. And I think that's ultimately important. But getting back to that, you being the brand, that's what I recognized early on in the early 1980s when I really started my own business was I have to represent me.

Okay. And I have to represent myself. Well Here's another example. I have said one or two swear words in my life. Okay. But I will never swear around a possible client or person I'm working in business with. And you know, and I'm not condoning being foul mouthed at home, you know, with your spouse or your kids.

Okay. But you know, if you say something at home, Oh, well, so, you know, so be it. For the simple reason, once again, I'm representing myself now, not being phony with people, but at the end of the day, it's like, Hey, I don't know that they're not going to be offended. If I used whatever the swear word might be, okay.

I'm not talking bolder ones. I'm just talking even, even the basic ones, you know, things like that, that you learn over the years, you know, of just kind of being really honest, [00:17:00] straightforward. And at the same time, very, respectful of, of what our mom's taught us, right, you know, the golden rule, treat people the way you want to be treated.

You know, and, here's another one. No, this comes to mind. And I learned this in the car business, never prejudge. This is an amazing thing that happened. My dad was a construction guy. My uncles were all construction guys, which mean when they went to work, they would come home at the end of the day, normally sweaty and dirty doing construction work you're outside.

So when I was working in that car dealership in Pennsylvania, Car, for those of you who've never sold cars, they work on an up system. In other words, somebody comes on the lot. If you're the next person up for a sale, you're the one that walks out and says hello to that person. If they buy a car, you know, you make your commission.

The guy behind me, I'm sitting in here and a guy sitting behind me, his name was Jim, he looks at a guy getting out of an old beat up truck and he says, I don't feel like going out right now. It's kind of hot out. He says, you know what? You take him. He said, plus look at the guy. [00:18:00] He said, he's not going to buy a car.

I looked at the guy and I saw a guy with work boots. With dirt on his work boots, with dirt on his overalls, getting out of a truck that obviously was being used on a construction site. And at that time, this was in the Pocono mountains in Eastern Pennsylvania. At the time, there's a lot of construction going on.

I don't know if there still is, but you know, this is 40 years ago, almost. And I looked at that fella and he reminded me of my dad or my cousins or my uncles that all worked at construction. And I said, that guy's making money. He's dirty because he's making money. Somebody's paying him to be dirty. You know what I mean?

He's not, he's not rolling around in the mud. He's dirty because he's working. Somebody's paying him. So I just used my, my logic, like, you know, the guy's working no different than, than my relatives all did. And I walked out and I introduced myself. Well, that guy wound up buying eight trucks from us

day.

Okay, bought a fleet of trucks all used trucks, by the way And by the way in the car business you make more money on a used vehicle than you do a new vehicle At least you did then I may have changed but the point [00:19:00] was I make this this big sale to this guy And of course the guy the other guy he's mad at me because I made the sale and I said jim You judged the guy because of the vehicle he got out of I said, why didn't you use your common sense?

That man's working for a living. He's dirty because somebody's paying him to get dirty all day because they don't want to get dirty all day. He's obviously, you know, building a house somewhere for somebody. Turn out he was a stonemason. Okay. So he did masonry. So he was dealing with concrete and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

So, you know, you learn not to prejudge. In my network marketing life, I've had tremendous success with two groups of people. One are people who have immigrated to either the United States or Canada. Cause I've, I've, I've worked all over the world, but primarily I've worked in those two markets and I've had people that have come from countries where they don't speak English well.

But they're living in the United States of Canada in places where, you know, English is the primary language. And a lot of times they come from countries that their language is only spoken by a pocket of people. So [00:20:00] they're laboring with English and they become super successful in my organization. As opposed to some English speaking people who were born and went to school, you know, down the street.

And they have every excuse in the world why they're not successful. And secondly, I always had a lot of luck with single, single, Mothers, right? Because here's what I recognized was single mothers early on. Once again, the logic, just like the guy getting out of the truck dirty. A single mom's probably given up on that image of the guy coming along on the white horse and rescuing her. Most single moms, and statistically 52 percent of women in America are single moms,

Kingsley: images,

John: they've given up on that notion, which means they know that everything they do is going to be up to them.

Kingsley: and I'm going

John: their kids, taking care of their kids, paying for karate lessons, all that stuff is on them. sometimes there's a ex husband or whatever, but for the most part,

Kingsley: I'm

John: that.

I had a lot of luck working with single moms [00:21:00] because I recognized their strength, that they were going to get the thing done, working around school schedules and all the other stuff of being a mom. And this is a true story. My lawyer, Now, okay, his mom's deceased. His mom was my top distributor in a company that I built in the 80s and the early 90s, okay.

He wound up, I knew him since he was a little boy, now he's a lawyer in Los Angeles now. And I watched him grow up and I watched her raise him. But my point about that is, Gainesley, that I recognize, once again, the strength of those women. And that they would go out and be go getters in my business. All I needed to do was teach them some basic fundamental stuff about product, pay plan, et cetera, et cetera, and let them go.

They would do the work and the heavy lifting to build their business. They would not be that reliant on me. And frankly, they weren't. And I had six of them in one company become multimillionaires.

Kingsley: it's seeing the potential in the person and drawing that out of them? [00:22:00] Is it giving them an opportunity because they're already hungry? They know they need to do something and there's an opportunity they're going to grab and run with.

What's, what's the most important part or is it both equal?

John: It's both probably equal, but I think it's the fact that in the direct selling industry, network marketing, whatever you want to call it, It's a level playing field. Like in the real world, at least here in America, there is prejudice against women. Sometimes a company will pay a man more to do the same job as a woman.

And all the legislation in the world isn't going to resolve that. The end of the day, it's going to be, well, you know, the guy's got a family, pay him a few thousand dollars more per year to do the same job. In a direct selling field, if the compensation plan says, Hey, we're going to pay out 47%. It doesn't say, but we're going to pay women 45.

We're going to pay men 47. That number is a hard set number. So the opportunity is the same for a woman as it [00:23:00] is for a man. It's the same opportunity for somebody that comes from a foreign country. And relocates as it is somebody who was born, you know, right here in the United States or Canada, for example.

So I think that's, one of the things I love about the direct selling industry, but also I think it's what, what people that, and that's not me. You know, I'm obviously a white Anglo Saxon guy. Okay. I haven't been in that situation. I can't relate to a single mom on a personal level, but I can on a business level, because I see what they go through and that they're looking for opportunity and that they're hungry.

And in some cases they're hungrier than. You know, people who have been given all the advantages, you know, in a particular market.

Kingsley: that's quite often the case where. people who haven't had everything given to them, they haven't had the opportunities maybe thrust upon them that actually when there is something there, they do see an opportunity and a possibility to run with. And I think one of the things there is having people see an opportunity [00:24:00] that's in front of them, because quite often they don't.

And obviously you, you know, to find those people and give them an opportunity or show them an opportunity that's there for them to, To run with something is a massive thing. Was that something do you think that's in their mindset already? Like looking back over some of the people you worked with, was that in their mindset already, or is that something you had to work with them and they had to develop themselves?

John: Great question. I think it was already there. All I did was lit a match and said, hey, you realize what you can do. You realize what you can do for your kid. Okay, your, your kid who's a piano prodigy, your kid who could be a good athlete, but they're going to need lessons in coaching, your kid who may be on the other end, your kid who maybe is challenged academically, where you're going to need to get some extra tutoring for them.

It all costs money. So you, all you do is set the match, so to speak, with those people and say, look, let me, let me, you [00:25:00] know, let me show you a way and then let me fire you up on that way, not with hype, but with some basic fundamental things that you can do in your, in your business and then let them go and then be there to tweak things along the way.

When they come back and they say, you know, I did this, I did that. I'm making this much money, but I really need to make this much money. How do I get there? You know, that was always my job. It kind of coached them on, okay, here's what we can do. You're making this much to go to here. You know, you're talking to five people a day.

You need to talk to 10 or you need to talk to 15 and you need to do this. And then, you know, like I was there, you know, more than anything else for those people, but a lot of times I just got out of the way, let the, let the free enterprise take place and let, and let the hunger. And, you know, I think it was, Napoleon Hill said, and think and grow rich, right?

About the, the, the, burning desire that people have, if they have a burning desire, You can teach them all day. You don't need to teach them anything. Really. You just need to guide them. Okay. If somebody has a burning desire, [00:26:00] somebody who doesn't have a burning desire, and you teach them all day, teach them until you're blue in the face, you can teach them everything you've learned for 42 years and they can take notes on it.

And it really doesn't matter because they're not going to apply any of it. If they don't have that burning desire to go out and succeed. And, and by the way, I haven't seen just single moms or just immigrants. I mean, I've worked with a lot of people that, you know, look like you and I do to have been successful too.

That one element of that burning desire in all of those human beings, that burning desire has been the one thing I would say they all have in common is they have that burning desire to succeed and they go out and they work their butts off at it because that's the other part of it. There's nothing easy in business.

I anybody who tells you any business is easy as lying to you. So, but is it worth it? Yeah, absolutely. It's worth it. I mean, the financial merits alone are worth it. Okay. But also what it teaches us, what it teaches us in the respect that we know we can stand on our own two feet, no matter what circumstance comes our way.[00:27:00]

Sometimes that circumstance is not a business circumstance. Sometimes it's a life circumstance. Let me give you one from my own life here. Not my proudest moment, but my daughter doesn't mind that I share this and I share this with people sometimes for a good reason. My, my oldest daughter, who I adopted, my wife's biological daughter, who I adopted when she was a little girl, she got herself involved with some drugs and, and bad and almost died.

30 days. And at the end of the rehab session, we picked her up, and she looks at me and she says, Dad, and I'm, I'm her dad, I mean, you know, this biological father nowhere in sight, so I raised her, and she looks at me and she says, Dad, I know what you're going to say. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I'm like, okay, well, what am I going to say to me?

She says, day at a time, brick at a time, process by process is how I'm going to beat this drug addiction. You go, like first you wanna cry, and then you break out in a cold [00:28:00] sweat and you realize My mentor used that in my network marketing career. I picked up that expression. I probably repeated it a thousand times in my house here on calls, on conference calls on Zoom, calls on all sorts of things.

She's watched me speak in different places in the world. And all of a sudden something a whole lot more serious than building a business happens in her life and she says She takes from her self development that I shared with her, right? You know brick by brick process by process day by day It's how i'm going to beat this thing and she had by the way, she stayed clean and she's doing great and she's She's working.

She's clean. She's healthy. Thank the good lord. So sometimes what we do is more important for our families than just making a living and giving them all the great economic opportunities that come with it. Sometimes it's what they learn if they apply in their lives that we indirectly have given them because of our careers.

So, you know, we have important jobs to do. [00:29:00] Okay.

Kingsley: Maxwell, as I'm sure you very well aware, his thing is leadership is influence and you don't need to be the boss.

To be the influencer because people watch whether they're above, beside, below, whatever, uh, always watching and always picking up on things. And it's so incredibly important. I've had that same thing happen with my kids as well, both the good and the bad where you're I remember saying to one of my kids who was, when she was three, my eldest, I'm like, who did you say, who did you hear say that?[00:30:00]

she's like you. And I'm like, I did, didn't I? I didn't even realize I was saying something and she picked up on it and that slapped me when that happened. It's like, I need to watch what I'm doing and what I'm saying, because it's right there.

John: Black.

Exactly. Yeah, you know, let me give you one other quick, quick tidbit of, of success. , I was working, With a company here in Dallas. This is how I got to Dallas now. Wow. 30 years this year that I came down here and I came down here, to help a friend of mine who had a direct selling company. And I wasn't a distributor with that company.

He brought me in to be an advisor and put together some of the marketing for it. And one day, a guy named Ron walks in my office and he says, would you like to have lunch with Jim? And I'm like, Jim, I mean, you know, we're in direct selling. 500 guys named Jim, Jim who? He's like, Jim Rohn, let me check my calendar.

The only time I ever met Jim, I did meet Jim Rohn periodically, [00:31:00] shake hands and stuff, but I mean, it's the only time I ever really got to sit down and break bread with him. And here's something for your listeners Kingsley that I hope they really hear me on.

We're sitting there at lunch, myself, the owner of the company that I was doing this, this business with. And this other gentleman who had actually worked for Jim as a ghostwriter. And we're sitting, I have a lunch and these two guys are 20 plus years older than me. One's still alive. The other, the other passed away.

And I'm about 35 maybe at the time. And, we finished lunch and Jim looks across the table and he says, he points at me, he's got his glasses up on his head. Like he always had, right? If you ever see him, he always wore the glasses up here. And he says, These two guys, maybe it's too late for, but for you, I still have hope, Mr.

Solider. He always called you, Mr. By the way, and you're less Mr. Solider. And I said, okay, I know exactly what he's saying. Nobody's taking notes. I ran to my car. You would have thought I was Usain Bolt running to my car. I ran to my car. I got my daytime or what I call a day timer, right? Other people call it a journal.

Jim called it a [00:32:00] journal. I was holding a day timer, but same thing. I bring it back in. I start to make some copious notes on everything that said, he said, John, hang on a minute. The reason I told you that is what if this waiter who's taking care of us comes over and he says something so prolific and you go home tonight and you say, wow, what that waiter said was prolific and you come tomorrow and the waiter quit and nobody knows where he is or better yet, you come tomorrow and you say to the waiter, Hey, yesterday you said something and the guy looks at me and says, I don't remember what I said, but when he says it, it becomes yours and if you put it in your journal, it's yours forever and I was like, that's why Jim Rohn was Jim Rohn.

He shows me, he had his journal there by the way, he showed me his journal which was one of hundreds of journals that he had over the years. He shows me his journal, newspaper clippings, this is pre internet by the way, so newspaper clippings, things he wrote down that other people said, things he probably heard on the news, all the miscellaneous stuff that he took [00:33:00] in, thousands of little notes and clips.

That's how he became the best at what he did. You know, you look at his influence on Tony Robbins and on, you know, countless others, you know, famous and the infamous for that matter. I mean, everybody has a Jim Rohn quote. They may not know it was Jim Rohn that said it, but you know, chances are

,

Kingsley: in those lines, I remember listening to Zig Ziglar when he was around as well and saying that he would study, I'm pretty sure it was two hours a day, it was either two or three hours a day he would spend in reading and research. uh, but the same thing, you know, they're both sort of up at the pinnacle of, um,, self development industry around the same sort of time frame.

And, but it's interesting, I didn't realize that Jim Rohn was quite prolific like that as well. So it just goes to show what it takes, doesn't it?

John: Well, Zig I'll tell you my, my, my Zig experience, okay? Zig was here in Dallas, you know, lived in Dallas most of his life. He's from, I think, Mississippi originally. [00:34:00] And, the gym I was working out at when I first moved to Dallas, there was a hair salon next door. So one Saturday morning I look out there and I see this Cadillac pull up and I see this guy get out of the car, go around, open the door for his wife.

I see this well, very well manicured, middle aged woman with red hair get out of the car. That's the redhead. Well, that's Zig Ziglar, okay? And remember, this is on pre internet, where you, you know, you didn't see these people all the time. You saw them at events. You saw their picture in their books. But you didn't see them like we do today, where, you know, they're all over the place.

He takes her by the elbow, walks her into the hair salon, goes to get back in the car. Well, I run out of the gym. I'm like, this is Ziglar. What are you doing? He goes, well, I'm going back to my home until my wife's done with her hair salon. I said, Well, what else are you doing? He goes, well, I need a cup of coffee.

I said, well, we have coffee in here. So I'm dragging Zig Ziglar literally into the gym and we had a nice couch in there. So I'm like, look, Well, [00:35:00] I'll get you coffee. I got him a cup of coffee and I said, do you mind if we sit down and talk? Sure. Why not? He says, I'm only going to get coffee and go home. He says, but I can, you know, He says, I've got to kill an hour and a half anyway.

He says, I'll talk to you. So myself and two other guys, we sat with Zig and we just talked about Business, sales, religion, philosophy. I mean, you, we, we covered it all. I mean, there wasn't, it wasn't many subjects we didn't cover. And, then he looked at his watch and he said, well, she's just about done.

Gentlemen got up, shook our hands and laughs. And I was like, the guy was as real as if you were paying him lots and lots of money to stand in front of, you know, 10, 000 of your best salespeople. He was just as real, just as honest, just as direct, just as knowledgeable. But here's the other part of that. He didn't know we were watching him take his wife out of the car.

He was a gentleman with his wife, always loved his wife dearly, but he, but in other words, he was just [00:36:00] as real when the camera wasn't rolling, it was just as much a gentleman then as when the lights were on and he, and he was on. And some of these guys aren't, honestly, I've met some that, but it's like, wow, you know, they turn the camera off and they're two different people.

They're Jekyll and Hyde. He, and Jim for that matter, were just as, just as real and just as honest, you know, Off camera as they were on camera, you know, and, we, our world needs more Ziggs and more Jims, frankly.

Kingsley: It's interesting you say that because when you look at um, like Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar and you look at them and they were right up until the very, very end, they didn't stop doing what they were doing and stop being the people who they were. And it just went all the way through. Yet often you look now and there's people come and go all the time and it seems a big difference.

And maybe you just hit on something there. with the just being the real normal people, wherever they were happy to help, they actually lived the life that they talked [00:37:00] about

John: Exactly.

And I think the other part of that was both of those guys really felt both of them were men, very, very, both very religious men. And I think both of them felt like they were really helping people. So to your point, yeah, both of them until, until they got sick at the end, until the end of their lives, they basically did what they did.

Cause they were like, Hey, the message I'm giving is important. It's relevant. It's not just. Getting a commission check for showing up and selling merchandise and all of that. Sure, they're businessmen. End of the day, you know, there's an outcome to all of that. But at the end of the day, I think both of them, you know, really felt like, Hey, I'm, I'm helping people.

You know, in a big way and that they need to hear my message because it's going to help them to, you know, Do better in their life take better care of their family and you know Do all the other things that that successful people can do for their community.

Kingsley: I guess, on what you just said, it's, it's being rewarded for giving service to people, isn't it? What, what they're doing, they're just giving service to people all the time and a lot of, a lot [00:38:00] of value. And I often think back to what I've learned from those guys over the years. And I can't think of anything that is not still a hundred percent relevant today of anything that they say.

John: John maxwell's another guy. I mean, I mean he's still going strong By the way, he did a seminar in florida. Some people I know were at about two weeks ago So john's still going strong and he's he's up there in years too now, but You know, these guys, they have incredible messages.

Brian Tracy's still going strong. I mean, there's a few of the others. Doug Weed I met one time. Doug Weed was a great guy. He was an Amway distributor. And then he wrote a lot of books, not about the presidents of the United States, but about the children of the presidents of the United States. Fascinating, great speaker.

But he said something, you know, Doug said something that stayed with me for years. And I use this sometimes when there, when there's arguments within [00:39:00] my, my, my business. Not to say arguments, but people, people not hearing each other. He was quoting Solomon.

Accurate communication allows progress. I think about that for a minute, right? Accurate communication allows progress. If we don't accurately communicate with one another, we can't go forward.' cause we think the other person said this or we think the other person meant that. Whereas if somebody says, look, it's this item is $199, well we discounted on Tuesday to 179 and that's the best deal you're going to get.

And then the consumer says, okay, I guess I'll buy it on Tuesday 'cause it's 179. They know they can't get it for 159. You know, I'm just making up an example here, but that, that clearness of message, Ronald Reagan understood that. Reagan was such an amazing communicator. Winston Churchill, even though he didn't have the gift of.

pronunciation the way that somebody like [00:40:00] Reagan had, for example, he was clear in his messaging at a time where people needed strength in a message, you know, he was very clear in the messaging, you know, so I heard Doug say that and a lot of people don't know who Doug was, but he was a heck of a speaker and, and, wrote some great books.

I've got a number of books, but you know, these people, all this information's out there, Kingsley, as you well know, and I well know, it's all out there. It's just a case of. You know, turn off the soap operas on TV and, and listen to podcasts like what you're putting together here and, and, you know, read some of the things of some of these people that have been written, and continue to educate yourself, you know, and I, like I said, I learned that all those years ago and I'm still, you know, 15 minutes in the morning before I do anything.

I say, I get up, I say my prayers, and it's like 15 minutes I'm cracking a book. I'm reading something. , I'm doing, like, for example, right now, I'm actually interviewing different [00:41:00] authors, on my YouTube channel. I started a thing called Ink and Insight on Wednesdays. I just launched it, the first one last Wednesday.

So I'm taking four or five chapters of, of books, of live authors,

Sylvester Stallone. The chapter I'm releasing this week is I'm Mary Kay Ash. Next week is Ogue Mandino. Then Abe Lincoln. Fascinating people. All in their own right. And the guy who wrote, wrote these particular stories about them based on the history of those people, you know, I'm interviewing him.

And so it's like I'm always reading what I'm going to interview somebody on or talk to somebody on, but also what I'm interested in. And, you know, 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be three hours. You know, take 15 minutes and just kind of fill the brain. I

Kingsley: makes it makes a massive, massive difference. And one of the things I've discovered as well by learning things, whether it's reading, leading to podcasts or whatever, that quite often as, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well as get into business and you can get stuck in a rut or you get where you're not pushing through, you're not making things happen.

You can feel like [00:42:00] giving up or you can feel like it's not working. Nothing's happening. Uh, and lose all your motivation and inspiration. And just by learning a new thing, it's like, bang, I've got something. I can go and you're ready to go again. And so doing that what you're doing and hearing other people's stories like that is fantastic.

That'll make a massive difference for people.

John: just finished reading about Walt Disney, for example, and I did not know, and I've been at Disney like, you know, I don't know, 20 times in my life, right, between Florida and California. I didn't know all the, all the starts and stops that he had. I mean, I, I knew it wasn't easy what he did, but boy, you read his life story and you're like, wow, I mean, you know, lost all his money a couple of different times.

You know, one of the things happened with him, how he came up with, with Nicky Mouse. Mickey Mouse was actually, he had gotten so broke that he was eating canned beans every [00:43:00] night. He was single at the time. He's eating canned beans. He's living in what they call a flop house, like just a rented room somewhere.

And every night when the can would get empty, this little mouse would come along and eat the balance of whatever was in the can. So he's like, I'm going to call this mouse Mortimer. Well, all of a sudden Mortimer had become friends. He goes, wow, this mouse is kind of interesting. Mortimer eventually becomes Mickey Mouse.

Well, how much money is Mickey Mouse generated over the years? I don't know. Billions, I'm sure, right? You know, so he took a negative and he turned it into a positive. Instead of seeing it like, let me, let me squish this mouse and kill it. Well, Hey, the mouse needs to eat too. He's not bothering me. I got my food.

He can have the balance. And all of a sudden it gives him a great idea.

Kingsley: back at people where we look at Disney and what it is and who are you, what are you accomplished and everything else. And when you're not, you know, when you getting happening and getting moving and things and you, you don't realize that they had their [00:44:00] chapter one of their book when they were just starting what's going on.

And then chapter two, it all collapses. And then chapter three kicks off again and has another go. And, and everyone goes through exactly the same phases to a, to a degree. I love that. And just learning from people like that,

John: And they, and they don't give up those people, you know, they got such fortitude, the people we never heard of were the ones that gave up the ones that stuck with whatever it is, whatever their passion was. You know, we know their names because, you know, thankfully they, they, they stayed the course.

Kingsley: whole other topic, which is a really good one as well. But unfortunately, John, our time is actually up. I thank you so much for today. And, uh, what a lot of don't realize is before we actually got on here, you were very, very patient while we get all the technical stuff sorted out. So I really appreciate that as well.

I end the podcast, I always got a couple of questions, uh, cause love to talk about tomorrow. It's not today. We talk about the ultimate tomorrow. I want to ask you, [00:45:00] John, what is the ultimate tomorrow?

John: The ultimate tomorrow, you know, for, for me is to help as many people as I possibly can before I close my eyes the last time, you know, I, I feel like, you know, when much is given, much is expected. And I've been given so many gifts in my life, all the great people we talked about and ones we don't even have time to talk about, but I learned things from some that I knew, you know, Jim, I met, you know, Zig, I met.

You know, I've met John Maxwell a few times and others and others that I never met that were either dead long before my time, but I feel like I've been given a gift, so I want to give that gift back as much as I possibly can to help mankind and womankind, by the way, you know, help as many people as I possibly can, because I think that's why we're put on this earth is to do good.

Kingsley: John, how can people, based on what you've just said there, how can either you or other people that are listening create their ultimate tomorrow?

John: You know, I, I think once again, it goes back to a couple of things. Number one is the self development realize that [00:46:00] you are the brand. Work on you, okay? Remember, when I point a finger, what normally happens, I point my finger there's four fingers coming back at me, okay? Which means the ultimate responsibility is mine.

Secondly, attitude. Whoever created the English language did something really smart that we don't even realize. And we won't do this for the sake of time, but I'll give a fast example. If you take the word attitude, and you said, A is a 1, right? It's the first letter in the alphabet. The T is a 20, the next T is a 20, the next I is 9, the next T is 20, etc.,

etc. And if you do that, and you go through there, and you say, Okay, okay, let me, let me take Each letter of the word attitude, and what number of that is that in the alphabet? And then you add it up at the end, you're going to get a hundred percent. So our attitude determines everything that happens in our life.

I've met people like, as I described earlier, I've met people with incredibly good attitudes, no matter what happens, they just go through it.

Kingsley: LLC.

John: like, they're ready to quit. You're [00:47:00] like, didn't you tell me yesterday, you have, you have kids that you want to go to college or you have bills to pay, or you have an elderly parent that needs, you know, needs care or, you know, or whatever.

I mean, cause we all need. Money, you know what I mean? We all need some level of success in our lives to take care of our obligations. You know, so once again, your attitude, you know, like I said, and I don't have time for people with bad attitudes, to be honest with you, somebody's got a bad attitude, I just, I don't give them much time.

They have a good attitude. I'll work with them no matter how untalented they think they are. They can learn the skills to be successful. Skills can be learned. If you knew me in 1988, if you knew me in 1983, you'd be like, how the heck is this guy ever going to be successful? Sometimes I wonder that myself.

It's a result of a lot of hard work.

Kingsley: it is, that's what I love about life. No matter who we are, where we're at, we've got that opportunity and we take it, we can create that, um, life you want. That's what we're all about. And, uh, you, you've obviously done that, John. Thank you so much for being part of the, uh, [00:48:00] our podcast here.

It's been a pleasure having you on. And, uh, yeah, and just, like I said earlier, a masterclass in the business of In the overall bird's eye view of business is what you've given us today. And I really, really appreciate it.

John: Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate the invitation and thank you so much.

Kingsley: Remember create the life that you want.

John: That's,

Kingsley: So I'm going to

John: how about now

Kingsley: get started and I'm going to show you how to do it. It's a pretty good fit. And I think it's going to look great on the car. I can't wait to see it. All right, so I'm going to finish up. about the other

John: speaker,

Kingsley: of the project

John: this one, microphone

Kingsley: I'm going to talk a

John: one.

Kingsley: a very interesting project that I did as a student.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about a project that I did as a student, which is this project

John: Well, [00:49:00] you wanna go to this? It's. Is this one, can you hear you now? Can you hear me now?

Kingsley: Um,

John: I'm just trying to. How about now? No.

Kingsley: I'm going to talk a little bit about, um, uh, uh, uh, uh,

John: on mute. Okay. Now he's good.

Kingsley: uh,

John: us? Can you hear me?

Kingsley: You[00:50:00]

John: It must be on his end. Internal internal.

Kingsley: We like to

John: it. That's all. We got

Kingsley: this

John: What about the headset?

Kingsley: a

John: it.

Kingsley: A A A A R R R

John: Each other's on and you can see us.

Kingsley: [00:51:00] Okay.

John: Thing happen to me.

Maybe unplug. Oh, I can't hear it. 8, 000 miles away. No, it just happened to me and then I unplugged my headset and I could hear him. Yeah, nothing's plugged in, just a camera. No, no, I mean, but I was interviewing somebody and I unplugged and I could,

Kingsley: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.[00:52:00]

John: Could you hear him at first, the other one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine, yeah, no problem. Now I've been to Brisbane twice before, the Gold Coast, beautiful place. It's three minutes from the ocean or so. There's

Kingsley: the chat. And if you would like to view this video, I will be able to pull up

John: nothing else. It's all built in. Not one? No.

Kingsley: able to link to the resources that I was

John: Okay, disconnect. Okay.

Kingsley: would like to read through this link.

John: Yeah, there's something else.

Kingsley: some other resources that I mentioned on the subject, so people can see it. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. And I'm just going to click on this page.

John: Disconnect this. The headset.[00:53:00]

How about now?

But we should hear him though. There's like nothing working. No, there's nothing on this side. Send him an email so he can disconnect the microphone maybe. It's

Kingsley: Hello.

John: Hey!

Kingsley: You can hear me?

John: So I was trying to say, I had the same thing happen a couple of weeks ago. I had, I had, you know, I have a headset, I've got the microphone, I've got all the stuff. I couldn't hear the guy. And then I unplugged it and I was like, we're fine.

Kingsley: Yeah. It's, um,

John: Oh,

Kingsley: [00:54:00] Can you, hear me now?

John: yeah, yeah, now you're fine.

Kingsley: can still hear?

John: So whenever, whenever, yeah, whenever you did work.

Kingsley: Okay. So, um,

John: Yeah. Yeah.

Kingsley: okay.

John: Nice meeting you.

Kingsley: that? Is that sound good quality or is it pretty, pretty average?

John: It's good. Fine.

Kingsley: Okay. So for some reason, your sound isn't coming through here, but that's okay. Let's just run with it. Um,

John: Can you hear me now?

Kingsley: yeah, I can hear you fine. I just want to make sure that it's actually recording properly. So

John: Sure.

Kingsley: stop that.